


and when i walked away (i left footsteps in the mud so you could follow me)

by snixxlixx



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Episode: s05e17 Deus Lex Machina, F/F, Fix-it fic, Idiots in Love, Letting supercorp have healthy communication for once, Supercorp endgame, Trapped in an elevator and forced to talk to each other trope, admitting feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:42:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24118180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snixxlixx/pseuds/snixxlixx
Summary: Lena hits the button when she reaches the elevator, expecting that it’s already begun to take Kara upstairs, but the doors open immediately. It hasn’t gone up yet, and Lena is suddenly face to face with Kara for the first time since that night on Lena’s balcony.Kara blinks a few times, clearly confused, but casts her eyes down when she notices Lena. “Um, hey, Lena,” she mumbles, jamming a button on the wall to take her up to CatCo. “What— what floor?”Lena wrings her hands as the elevator doors close, but keeps her eyes trained on Kara. She can’t be a coward, she needs to be able to do this. “I’m… here to see you, actually.”or,Lena comes to offer condolences to Kara for her stepfather's death, but this time she catches the elevator before it brings Kara upstairs. In a wild and unpredictable turn of events, they actually have a genuine conversation about their feelings. 5x17 fix-it fic.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 44
Kudos: 691





	and when i walked away (i left footsteps in the mud so you could follow me)

**Author's Note:**

> it’s been eighty four years since i’ve posted my writing on the inter webs oops
> 
> i was mad after watching 5x17 so i decided to let supercorp have the healthy conversation the writers were too scared to let them have.
> 
> title from footsteps by kehlani, go listen to it!!

As much as she tries not to, Lena always notices Kara.

She shouldn’t, she knows she shouldn’t. Kara betrayed her, lied to her about the very core of her identity for years, made her think that there was someone out there who trusted her unconditionally despite her last name, made Lena think she was in lo—

The point is, Lena still notices Kara. Seeks her out without even realizing it, feeling her presence before she actually sees her. It always feels like a sudden warmth entering the room, a shift in energy just enough for Lena to feel lighter, brighter.

God, even her unconscious loves to betray her.

Even in a crowded room of people enthusiastically clapping about Andrea’s newest Obsidian technology, Lena notices Kara. She can’t help it, watching Kara out of the corner of her eye. It’s a habit that goes back to the days when they used to have movie nights, when Lena would subtly watch Kara watching the movie. It was always so much more entertaining than the film itself, especially when Kara made them watch The Little Mermaid—”It’s a classic, Lena, how have you not seen it?”, her friend had asked, incredulous at Lena’s lack of Disney exposure—and Lena couldn’t help watching Kara mouth along to every word of every song.

So when Andrea begins to gush about Lex being a “passionate ambassador” (Lena doesn’t want to know how he managed to pull off that title), she immediately senses Kara starting to leave the room. Her eyes snap to the blonde reporter, who rolls her eyes as she stalks over to the elevator. 

That British reporter, whatever his name is, the dull one who suddenly seems to always be in Lena’s business ever since the multiverse merged, doesn’t even seem to notice Kara leaving. Lena is fairly sure that they’re friends, at least friends, so it’s odd.

But it’s somewhat poetic, in a bitter, self-defeating way, that even after all the pain Kara has caused her, Lena is the only one to notice her walking away.

Before she even realizes what she’s doing, Lena’s feet start to bring her over to the elevator. She’s not even sure what she wants to say to Kara, but she feels compelled to say something, anything, after Kara just lost her stepfather. Lena knows the feeling herself, but she knows that Kara understands it even more; loss is something that Kara has experienced far too much of, more than Lena could ever comprehend, so she just… she needs to say something.

Lena hits the button when she reaches the elevator, expecting that it’s already begun to take Kara upstairs, but the doors open immediately. It hasn’t gone up yet, and Lena is suddenly face to face with Kara for the first time since that night on Lena’s balcony.

Kara blinks a few times, clearly confused, but casts her eyes down when she notices Lena. “Um, hey, Lena,” she mumbles, jamming a button on the wall to take her up to CatCo. “What— what floor?”

Lena wrings her hands as the elevator doors close, but keeps her eyes trained on Kara. She can’t be a coward, she needs to be able to do this. “I’m… here to see you, actually.”

Kara freezes when Lena says that, staring at the button she’d just pressed for a few moments, before shaking her head a bit, as if she was snapping out of a daze. “Yeah?”, she asks, slowly looking up at Lena.

“I came to offer up sympath—”

A powerful jolt cuts Lena off, knocking the high heels of her boots off balance. Before she knows it Kara’s strong arms are holding her up, and she hates that her first thought is how long it’s been since she’s felt Kara’s touch. 

She hates even more that her second thought is how much she’s missed it.

“What just happened?”, Lena asks, a bit breathless from the shock of almost falling and not because she’s in Kara’s arms. 

“I think, um, I think the elevator just broke.”

Kara bites her lip, and Lena panics a bit as she realizes how close their faces are. She quickly stands up straight, backing up from Kara.

“Okay, well, there’s got to be some kind of emergency button.” Lena glances over the sleek, shiny elevator buttons, and presses the one with an icon of an alarm on it. “That should do it.”

But after a few moments, nothing has happened. Lena presses it again, multiple times in a row, and still it doesn’t light up, still it remains silent in the elevator.

“What the fuck,” Lena mutters, kicking the door with the toe of her boot. “I’m going to give Andrea a piece of my mind when we get out of here.”

Kara chuckles a bit, crossing her arms. “I think she’s too busy trying to make CatCo become more like Vogue to notice a faulty elevator.”

“I don’t know, now that Lex is doing all of her Obsidian promotion I reckon she’d have more time on her hands,” Lena muses. She looks around the elevator for a solution, and her eyes land back on Kara, who anxiously plays with her glasses.

“Couldn’t you just… pull the doors open, or something? I mean, you do have super strength.”

Kara peers at the elevator doors over the top of her glasses, before shaking her head. “We’re only, like, a foot off the ground. Everyone outside would see me.”

“And it looks like I have no phone signal in here,” Lena sighs, glaring down at the lack of bars on her screen. “I guess we’re stuck until this thing is over.”

Kara takes a sharp breath, and Lena can instantly tell that Kara is more agitated than she’s letting on. She remembers Kara mentioning that she was claustrophobic, back when they were having lunch together one day in Lena’s office. Lena had admitted that she was scared of the dark—a fear she’d had since she was a little girl, spending nights in the dark Luthor mansion—and Kara had quickly jumped in to talk about her own fear, probably to ease the pain Lena felt talking about her family.

Kara always did things like that, little things to make Lena feel better. Bringing her coffee from Noonan’s on the days after she’d inevitably flown by Lena’s office late at night, seeing the CEO still working into the early hours of the morning. Giving Lena warm hugs and comforting hand squeezes when she looked like she needed them. Dropping off donuts because she was horrified that Lena had never tried the ones from her favorite shop.

If their friendship was all a lie, then why had it felt so real?

Lena’s body betrays her again, as it tends to do around Kara, and she reaches out to softly grab Kara’s shaking hand. The reporter is pale and fidgety, and Lena can’t help but want to help her.

“Hey, let’s— come sit down with me. We’ll be okay.”

Kara lets Lena guide them to the back of the elevator, and they both sink down to the floor, sitting up against the wall. Keeping a hold on Lena’s hand, Kara takes a deep breath, seeming to relax a bit, and Lena doesn’t even think of moving her hand away.

“I, um. I get so terrified when I’m trapped in small spaces like this, because it reminds me of— of the pod I was stuck in, on my way to Earth,” Kara tells her, closing her eyes and leaning back against the wall. “I was stuck in the Phantom Zone for twenty four years, just… floating there, surrounded by nothing.”

Lena shakes her head, squeezing Kara’s hand tighter. She can’t even fathom what that would be like, stuck for so long with nothing but memories of her home planet being destroyed.

“Thank you for telling me,” Lena says softly. It’s quiet for a few minutes, as Kara’s breathing becomes more even, and eventually Lena turns towards her.

“I was coming to tell you how sorry I am, about Jerimiah. I know it’s nothing, really, in comparison to everything that you’ve lost, but… I get it, and understand how hard it is.”

Kara opens her eyes, gazing over to Lena. “Thank you. Really, you don’t know how much it means to hear you say that.”

Lena shrugs, and looks back at the elevator doors. “Yeah, well. Old habits die hard, I guess.” She sighs, picking at the end of her dress. “After everything, I… I still care about you. It’s kind of infuriating.”

Kara is quiet for a moment, contemplative, and Lena sneaks a glance at the blonde to find her still looking at Lena. She’s always had a way of being able to look deeper at Lena than anyone else, somehow seeing straight into her soul. It’s… unnerving, but also strangely comforting, knowing that someone takes the time to truly see her, beyond her protective walls.

“I’ve cared about you since we first met, when you were talking about wanting to make a name for yourself outside your family,” Kara says, slowly, carefully. “I know you think none of it was real, and that’s fair… I’ve earned it. But Rao, Lena, you couldn’t be more wrong.”

Lena tenses a bit, but doesn’t let go of Kara’s hand, and the reporter must take it as a sign to continue.

“Finding lame excuses to have lunch with you, kicking everyone’s butts at game night, stuffing four potstickers into my mouth at once just to make you laugh… those were the best parts of my day. I knew it then, but it crashed down on me so much harder when you weren’t— when we didn’t see each other anymore.”

Kara sighs, looking down. “As Supergirl, the sun heals me, and… in some weird way, it’s like you were able to heal the part of me that’s Kara Danvers. The part that, for my whole life, I’d never felt comfortable as, because I just felt so unnatural, never being able to fit in as a human. And then I met you, and you just… you made me feel normal. Like being Kara was enough, like I could make a difference without putting on a red cape. I never knew how much I needed that, needed you, until you— you hated me.”

Lena hastily wipes at her eyes, which have begun to tear up. She’s finding herself believing Kara, even when she knows she shouldn’t. She shouldn’t, because Kara’s caused her so much pain, but what reason would Kara have to lie now, after everything’s blown up between them?

“I was going to out you as Supergirl to the whole world, the night of your Pulitzer party,” Lena finds herself admitting. “I felt so hurt, and betrayed, and in that moment I was going to ruin your life.”

Kara tenses, like Lena did before, but still doesn’t let go of her hand. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because you came up to me, and just… told me you were Supergirl. And I was so caught off guard, because I didn’t think you’d ever tell me. But you did, and you sounded so genuine, and… I’m starting to think that you were.”

“I was,” Kara tells her softly.

Lena squeezes her eyes shut, leaning her head back against the wall. “Tell me something else. Something else that’s true.”

Pausing to think for a moment, Kara releases a breath. “Mxyzptlk visited me, when I was distraught over not having told you sooner. I— I wanted to know if I could’ve prevented all this if I’d told you my secret earlier. He showed me a bunch of different scenarios, though, and every single one ended badly.”

A tear slides down Kara’s cheek, and Lena fights the urge to reach out and wipe it away. “In one timeline where I’d told you sooner, you— you died, right in my arms. So, I wouldn’t change anything. I’d rather have you hate me forever, because at least you’d be alive.”

Lena feels frozen. She definitely didn’t see that coming, but somehow she doesn’t doubt that it’s true. “Wow,” is all she manages to choke out, and Kara squeezes her hand.

“Yeah… alright, your turn. Tell me something true.”

Lena thinks for a moment. “I genuinely wanted to use Myriad for good. I— I can see now, in hindsight, that I couldn’t just fix humanity like that, but I was so destroyed inside that it seemed like the only way.”

“I believe you,” Kara says, giving her a small smile. “I… fried your alien detection device. I was so nervous that it wouldn’t work, and somehow it did.”

“You bitch,” Lena teases, feeling the corners of her lips turn up. “I used Obsidian’s virtual reality to punch you in the face when I was really mad at you.”

“I hate kombucha. Like, I pretended I liked it when we went to that weird distillery, but Lena, that stuff is awful.”

“I liked your hair way better before you got bangs.”

Kara laughs out loud at that, her eyes crinkling in the way that Lena’s missed. “Yeah, that’s fair. I got them done in a low moment when I was feeling awful about not having told you my secret. A manifestation of Catholic guilt, maybe… although the Danvers are Jewish.”

They smile at each other for a moment, and Kara looks away, sighing wistfully. “I… I seek out your heartbeat, when I’m anxious or upset. I have ever since we first became friends, and I still did, even after you stopped talking to me.”

Lena’s stomach leaps at that confession, and she knows Kara can hear her heart racing. “I left Jack and came to National City because I wanted to work with you… and I let him die to save you because even though I loved him, I could live without him. But I couldn’t live without you.”

“I’m in love with you.”

Lena’s eyes widen, and so do Kara’s, as if she didn’t mean to say it. But Kara doesn’t take it back; she sits still for a while, before taking a breath of courage and turning to look at Lena.

“I didn’t realize it for a long time. I’d never really had any female friends, so I thought what I had with you was just friendship, a kind I’d never had before. But when I was with Mon-El, I was always thinking of things I wanted to do with you before I even thought of doing them with my own boyfriend. When I told Alex that, she laughed at me and told me I’d figure it out. And once I did, it just felt… right. Like a part of me was just, clicking together.”

Kara finally pulls her hand away, and Lena already misses the warmth of it. “But, seriously, you don’t have to say anything back, I—”

“God, Kara, how can you not know that I’ve been in love with you for years?”

Kara’s eyes snap up to hers, and Lena shakes her head, laughing a bit. “From the moment we met you showed me unconditional loyalty and support, even though the weight of our family history should have sent you running. I kept waiting for the moment it would fall apart, because that’s what I’ve come to expect from people… so when I found out you were lying to me, it just seemed to confirm what I’ve believed my whole life. That in the end, everyone will betray my trust.”

Lena lets out a shaky breath, her hands wringing together like they do whenever she’s anxious. “But I still love you, even after everything. I’ve never met anyone like you, who would still fight for me after all the terrible things I’ve done. Because you— you believe in me, even when I’m far past being able to believe in myself.”

“And I will, Lena. Even if you hate me. Because, you’ve believed in me too.”

Kara’s eyes are soft, and they make Lena relax, like they always have. She knows, suddenly, what the feeling is. The feeling she gets every time she looks into the calming sea of blue.

Home.

“That’s the thing, Kara,” Lena says, tentatively reaching up to stroke the hero’s face. “I don’t think I’ve ever been capable of hating you, even when I wanted to so badly.”

Kara leans into her touch, giving Lena a shy smile. “Really?”

“Yes, really. You’re very persistent, you know. You always tell me I’m good, even when I’m trying to execute a nefarious plot. It’s a little annoying.”

Chuckling, Kara leans closer until their foreheads are almost touching. Lena’s heart is racing, and Kara whispers her last true statement.

“I want to kiss you.”

Lena cradles Kara’s face with both hands, softly brushing her finger over the scar above her eyebrow. She never expected to end up here, barely an inch away from the girl she never thought she could have, but she wouldn’t trade it for anything.

“Well that’s good, because I want you to kiss me too.”

When Kara’s lips finally brush against her own, Lena feels like she’s melting. She’s thought about this, dreamed about this, for years, and it’s so much better than she ever could have imagined. It’s like flying, but also like a calm sense of security she’s never felt before.

Minutes feel like mere seconds, and eventually Kara pulls away, face flushed, looking more radiant than Lena’s ever seen her.

“So… you’re with me, right?”, Kara asks, and the implications of that statement make Lena roll her eyes, unable to stop the grin that overtakes her.

“Always.” Lena’s smile turns into a smirk, and she nudges Kara’s shoulder. “And as soon as we get out of here, we’re taking Lex down. His whole plot relies on us hating each other, you know.”

Kara laughs. “Well, then it’s a plot destined to fail… I don’t plan on letting you go any time soon. As my suit says, El Mayarah.”

Lena leans back in, letting her lips hover over Kara’s.

“Stronger together.”

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me on tumblr @snixxlixx


End file.
